Abstract:Charles Dickens is a British critical realist novelist of the 19th century. Dickens pays special attention to the description about life experiences of the "little people" who living at the bottom of society in the United Kingdom,  a profound reflection of the complex social reality, making outstanding contributions to the development of critical realism literature for the United Kingdom. Dickens is famous for revealing and criticizing capitalist society, his works widely and deeply describes all aspects of social life, clearly and vividly portrays representatives of all classes. From a humanitarian view, Dickens exposes and criticizes all kinds of ugly social phenomena and their representatives and gives sympathy to the suffering of the working people and their struggles, reflecting the powerful force of his realism and rational thinking. Resurrection, social justice, and humanitarian thoughts are the themes of Dickens’ representative work— A Tale of Two Cities. A Tale of Two Cities is different from general historical novel since its characters and main plot are all imaginary. Under the real background of the French Revolution, the author clues to give priority to the fictional character, Dr. Manette’s experience; justice, love and revenge are mutually independent but interrelated intertwined in the story，so the plot is complicated. The author takes flashback, foreshadowing, bedding and other practices in order to make the novel structure integrated closely. The plot twists and turns dramatic, which shows the author’s outstanding artistic skills. A Tale of Two Cities is one of Dickens' most important representative works, and it is the peak work in his later life. From the perspective of character traits, structure setting, plot analysis, rhetorical devices and humanitarianism, I will analyze the art features about A Tale of Two Cities overall and hope for reaching my own conclusion.

Keywords: A Tale of Two Cities; character traits; structure setting; language features; humanitarianism. 

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

 1.1 Charles Dickens and A Tale of Two Cities1

 1.2 Summary of the Novel.1

Chapter 2 Literature Review.3

Chapter 3 Character Traits in A Tale of Two Cities.5

3.1 Doctor Manette-5

3.2 Charles Darnay and Lucy Manette-5

3.3 Sydney Carton-6

3.4 Madame Defarge-6

  3.5Marquis St.Evermonde7 

Chapter 4 Structure Setting and Plot Analysis of the Novel-9

4.1 Structure Setting .-9

 4.2 Plot Analysis ..9

Chapter 5 Rhetorical Devices of the Novel-11

5.1 Parallelism-11

5.2 Metaphor-11

Chapter 6 Humanitarianism in the Novel-13

Chapter 7 Conclusion.15

References17

Acknowledgements18